Michael Dawson and T-Rexes Are Equally Good at Defense.

Both Jonathann and I will tell you that we think dinosaurs are pretty cool. Jaws rowed with razor-like teeth, bodies studded with horns and spikes, pulsating muscles - I was going to punctuate that by typing RAWR, but that looks kind of lame. Anyway, they're pretty fierce, and T-rexes were some of the fiercest dinos out there. They're believed to be the strongest meat-eating 'saurs. But if you were a smaller, quicker dino, and you attacked a T-rex, well... it might just look silly trying to fight you off before it succumbed. I mean, what is it going to do? Swing and miss with its oversized head? Flail about with its practically vestigial arms? Certainly it couldn't run away from you. DESPITE the ending to Jurassic Park, I declare: a T-rex is no match for a couple of velociraptors.
















Jonathann and I are also united in our love for Tottenham Hotspur, one of the highest scoring and most exciting teams in the English Premier League. The problem is that their games end up being more exciting for the opposition thanks to Tottenham's poor defense. Time and time again this season, Spurs have blown leads thanks to absolutely incompetent defending. The return of the masterful Ledley King from injury has helped somewhat, but more than anything it has highlighted the failure of Spurs' other center halves to live up to a reasonable standard. Michael Dawson partnered with King two seasons ago and looked fantastic. Indeed, it looked like King and Dawson might be the partnership of the future for the English National Team. Unfortunately that idea ignored the fact that Dawson is a crap defender who is utterly useless to any team with any trophy aspirations in England.

He is constantly out of position. He misses balls in the air and on the ground and fails to recover. He's slow. He just can't stay with opponents who have any speed, and all he can do is swing his oversized mug as they fly by. Occasionally, like in last weekend's FA Cup tie against Manchester United, he'll do something incredibly stupid to try to recover, costing the team dearly. He's big and strong, and fairly useful on set pieces on offense, but defensively, Michael Dawson is basically a T-rex who is useless against any and all raptor-like opponents.






















Luckily, we Spurs fans don't have to suffer much longer. Juande Ramos has proved himself to be a master of in-game adjustments, and he now is proving to be just as adroit in the transfer market. Scoring the talented Jonathan Woodgate from Boro is a masterstroke, provided that Woodgate and King, both of whom can be called Mr. Glass, can stay healthy. Put those two together and you have a legitimate all-England centerback tandem. In addition, the signings of Alan Hutton (possibly the biggest signing ever from Scotland!!!) and Chris Gunter provided added depth on the wings. Injuries have ravaged the Spurs backline this season, forcing players to play out of position far too often. The returns of Gareth Bale (!) and Ricardo Rocha in the coming weeks will further bolster the defense. When everyone is healthy, you'll have:

fullback: Chimbonda, Bale, Hutton, Lee, Gunter
halfback: King, Woodgate, Dawson, Kaboul, Rocha

That's depth AND frontline talent. The starting backline of Chimbo, Woodgate, King, and Bale will stop the bleeding, and with Bale manning the left flank, the ball may not even ever make it back to the defense. One can only wonder what might have been had we had this defense all season long... but hopefully it can lead us to some cup glory in what remains of the season.

Access, favor, and discretion?

(Yes, this is an introductory post for yet another amateur sports blog. Just give us 3 minutes here.)

Sports are a unique form of entertainment, and nowhere is this fact more apparent than in amateur sports analysis. In music, movies, and books, every patron is a critic, but sport seems to encourage amateur analysis like no other. A Google search for "sports" returns almost 2 trillion hits. Where is the discerning sports nut to go?

For the purposes of comparison, let's check out sports blog deadspin.com. Deadspin is the hip destination for the modern sports fan. Its tagline is "Sports News without Access, Favor, or Discretion". Lets compare ourselves to Deadspin, word by word.

Sports – OK, we're all about that. But we also throw in little bits about music and food - specifically, gigantic California burritos with lots of guacamole.

News - Well, Curry and Rice Sports is not going to be breaking very much news except for Wamiq's rec soccer team's scores and Jonathann's NCAA '08 game recaps. But analysis of news – well, there will be a lot of that.

Without – Wamiq really thinks that seven letter prepositions in titles should be capitalized. Jonathann concurs.

Access – Our access is unparalleled. Jonathann once had breakfast with John Stockton and Wamiq recently spoke to a very stoned employee of DC United’s youth development program. Can anyone at Deadspin can claim to have done those things? As should be abundantly clear, this is the type of access you won’t get anywhere else.

Favor – We're sports fans. We're going to favor the sports we love and the teams we love. Jonathann is from Jawjuh, so expect extra coverage of Hotlanta teams and Duke basketball. You can also expect coverage of Tottenham Hotspur, because it is the greatest football team (and it is not gay, as his fiancee claims . . . not that there’s anything wrong with that . . . ). His main sports are baseball, pro and college basketball, pro and college football, and soccer around the globe. Wamiq is from Joisey, so expect extra coverage of: the Knicks, the Mets, the Jets, the Devils, and the Red Bulls. He also supports Tottenham Hotspur, because it is the greatest football team (and still not gay, though he’d proudly support them if they were). His main sports are American and English soccer, pro basketball, pro baseball, and a little bit of everything else from tennis to cricket to ice skating. What? No. He didn't say that. Not ice skating (but OMG, whither Kimmie Meissner??). Basically, favor: we've got a lot of it. But we're aware of it. So, you can expect most of what you read here to be pretty objective, and you can expect us to issue a warning if we think we might not be. This applies to both sports analysis and meta-analysis. We read so much in the way of sports commentary that we'll be analyzing the analysis. Our patience for poor writing or reasoning is low (which is why Jonathann beats himself after writing every article). But it is objective. Read this blog and you'll know which sports columnists are insightful, and which should, in the words of the Teen Girl Squad, "stop saying words."

Or – Leaving a two letter preposition in lowercase is acceptable.

Discretion – Well, we've none of that.

So, to recap, we provide sports analysis without access or discretion, but with favor. Hm. Does that make us a biased Deadspin?

Well, there is one more reason you should read our blog: because we are awesome. Hence, this blog is awesome. Do you want to be awesome? Then watch this awesome space.